And another bunch of good news for us in region B, this time for one of my favourite topic: Ghost in the Shell. So far, all Blu-ray Disc releases of the anime classic have been useless for us because of that nasty region encoding Bandai and Buena Vista used on them. But now, finally, the Jersey based retailer play.com (yes, them again) has listed releases of the reworked Ghost in the Shell 2.0 and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence for an August 3rd, 2009 September 7, 2009 by Manga Entertainment UK!
Hopefully Innocence won’t have the same ‘features’ (only lossy audio, pitch problems with one of the English dubs) as Bandai’s recent US release. Please Manga, don’t make the Tachikomas cry…

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Good news for our British friends or rather their hungry Blu-ray disc players. Play.com has listed a fine selection of Asian Blu-ray releases that will hit the british shelves starting in late May. According to the listing Noboru Iguchi’s cult classic Machine Girl will be released on May 18th, followed by the Korean smash hit, The Good, the Bad and the Weird from director Kim Ji-Woon on June 1st, 2009. Stay tuned for more details.

Big thanks to r3d-3agl3 for sending me the links!

Machine Girl BD @ play.com
The Good, the Bad and the Weird BD @ play.com

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Updates may be a bit slow in the next few days since I’m leaving my comfy Affenheim for a business trip to the cold north. Keep an eye on the Twitterthingy in the sidebar for the latest status reports.

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It’s been a while since we’ve heard news from Sniper, Dante Lam’s thriller featuring a team of elite sharp shooters that has to deal with an ex-member who switched sides and is using his skills to take out his former teammates one by one. The trailer shows some new scenes and tells us that Sniper will open April 12th, 2009 in cinemas across Hong Kong.
Looks like the dust around Edison Chen’s little nekkid picture scandal has begun to settle.

[via 24fps]

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Four character posters for Takashi Miike’s Yatterman live-action adaptation, including Kyoko Fukada as leather-loving villainesse Doronjo…

[via Twitch]

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Speaking of Crunchyroll and free streaming Anime. February 27-28, the 2006 founded anime community will celebrate the Global Shinkai Day to honor the Japanese director, animator, voice actor and alleskönner Makoto Shinkai. Starting this Friday at 5PM PST, Makoto’s films Voices of a Distant Star, The Place Promised In Our Early Days and 5 Centimeters per Second will be available for streaming in DVD quality (480p, according to Crunchyroll). The price? Nada, it’s all free for 24 hours!

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Time of Eve (Eve no jikan) is a free ONA (Original Net Anime) from the Japanese animator Yasuhiro Yoshiura. Since August 2008, a new 15-minutes long episode get uploaded about every two months and can be watched with English (or Spanish, German, Italian, Portugese or Malayan) subtitles at Crunychroll.
In the not too distant future, humans are living together with highly developed androids who are serving as everyday tools. The only visual difference between the androids and the humans is a glowing ring floating above the android’s heads. While most people treat (or mistreat) the androids as soulless tools, some people begin to empathize with their robotic friends. Rikou is one of these so called android-holics who discovers the strange line “Are you enjoying the time of EVE?” in the log files of his female home android Sammy. Along with his friend Masaki he retraces Sammy’s GPS tracks and comes upon a mysterious cafe where androids can interact with humans without showing their rings. The only rule Time of Eve cafe is: Humans and androids are to be treated as equals…”

The first three episodes are already available and are surprisingly well produced if you consider the limited budget. According to the Japanese website episode four (of six) should be released on May 1st, 2009. Yoshiuras earlier works, Pale Cocoon and Mizu no Kotoba are also available for free at Crunchyroll.
Special thanks to Nico for the link!

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Rorschach, New York’s most psychotic trenchcoat-hero allows you a three minutes long look into his twisted mind and journal…

[via ComingSoon.net]

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I have to admit that, before last nights Annual Academy Awards, I never heard/read a word about Yojiro Takita’s Departures (Okuribito [おくりびと]) or Kunio Kato’s animated short La Maison en Petits Cubes (Tsumiki no ie). To make up for this and to fill the void in my (and probably some of your) heads, here’s the synopsis/trailer/clip for both award winning films.
Departures tells the story of the young talented cellist Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) who loses his job in the Tokyo orchestra and is forced to work in a funeral home prepping dead bodies for their cremation. While he’s ashamed to tell his wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) about his new job, he discovers that he may have found his true calling in preparing the departed for their last journey. Director Yojiro Takita’s Departed is the first Japanese film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Subtitled trailer at YouTube

Kunio Kato’s animated short, La Maison en Petits Cubes (Tsumiki no ie) took home the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and features an lonely old man in a town that slowly becomes submerged. While everyone else fled the town, he keeps on placing more and more cubes on top of his house to escape from the slowly rising water. One day he’s forced to scuba down to the submerged parts of his house and relives sweet and bitter memories from the times he spend down there.

The full animated short can probably be viewed on your favorite video site that allows user uploaded content…

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Yet another TV spot for the Fullmetal Alchemist reboot that will start airing April 5, 2009 in Japan. I think fans of the orginal series (and manga) will be most pleased to see a long lost friend again.

[via Manganimation]

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